Ex-teacher admits child molestations

SANTA ANA – A former teacher was sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to register as a sex offender after he pleaded guilty Tuesday to molesting two female students and possessing graphic child pornography, prosecutors said.

Alex Bassinne, 51, of Newport Beach, was a teacher with the Santa Ana Unified School District at the time of the assaults and had worked at Santa Ana High School and Raymond A. Villa Fundamental Intermediate School, prosecutors said.

Bassinne admitted with his guilty pleas that he molested a 15-year-old student by touching her buttocks during a class trip in 2009, and that he committed a lewd act by grabbing a 13-year-old student's shirt and positioning it so he could look at her chest, prosecutors said.

He was charged with pornography after he left a disc of graphic images of young girls in a desk drawer when he moved with his family from Laguna Niguel to Newport Beach. In April 2011, someone discovered the disc and turned it over to law enforcement, prosecutors said.